I and the Village

I and the Village, 1911, 192.1 x 151.4. Oil on canvas, Museum of Modern Art, NY.

I and the Village is a 1911 painting by the Russian-French artist Marc Chagall. It is currently exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.^[1]

The work contains many soft, dreamlike images overlapping each other in a continuous space:^[2] in the foreground, a cap-wearing green-faced man stares at a goat or sheep with the image of a smaller goat being milked on its cheek. In the foreground is a glowing tree held in the man's dark hand. The background features a collection of houses next to an Orthodox church, and an upside-down female violinist in front of a black-clothed man holding a scythe. Note that the green-faced man wears a necklace with St. Andrew's cross, indicating that the man is a Christian. As the title suggests, I and the Village is influenced by memories of the artist's place of birth and his relationship to it.^[3][1][4]

The significance of the painting lies in its seamless integration of various elements of Eastern European folktales and culture, both Russian and Yiddish.^[5] Its clearly defined semiotic elements (e.g. The Tree of Life) and daringly whimsical style were at the time considered groundbreaking.^[6] Its frenetic, fanciful style^[3] is credited to Chagall's childhood memories becoming, in the words of scholar H.W. Janson, a "cubist fairy tale"^[7] reshaped by his imagination, without regard to natural color, size or even the laws of gravity.^[3]

References

1. ^ ^{a b} "Marc Chagall: I and the Village, 1911". MoMA display caption. Retrieved 4 September, 2011.
2. ^ Rosenblum, 240
3. ^ ^{a b c} Barr, Alfred. "Masters of Modern Art". New York: Simon and Schuster, 1954. 133
4. ^ See also Leah Dickerman.
5. ^ Rosenblum, 241
6. ^ Nilsen, Alleen Pace. "Encyclopedia of 20th-Century American Humor". Phoenix, AZ: Oryx Press, 2000
7. ^ Janson, Horst Woldemar. "The story of painting, from cave painting to modern times". H. N. Abrams, 1977.

Sources

• Charlotte Douglas, Jeannene M. Przyblyski, I and the village: early works, Jewish Community Museum, 1987
• Rosenblum, Robert. Cubism and Twentieth-Century Art. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1966.